


Work Song.

by Geminiroulette



Series: Lyrical Beauty. [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geminiroulette/pseuds/Geminiroulette
Summary: Sometimes you're down until someone lifts you up.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/George Weasley
Series: Lyrical Beauty. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915906
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Work Song.

**Author's Note:**

> Work song is a song that always makes me tear up, it's so beautiful and I could just see a story laid out in front of me. There's a couple other songs that were close contenders so this might become a series but I really don't like writing where Fred is deceased so we will see.

Hermione comes in after a long day at work in the ministry, her hair has escaped the updo she’d done this morning and her wild curls are shaking off the last of the smoothing potion. George can see the dark circles interrupting her smooth brown skin and framing her dark honey eyes and he knows that its the nightmares keeping her up, even all these years later. He still gets them too, they’re the same and so different at the same time but maybe that’s how they ended up here. When she finishes putting her bag and her coat on the rack and meets his gaze its like the burning heat of a roaring fire seeing her mouth curve into a smitten smile. George opens his arms wide as she flings herself into them. She fits perfectly as a puzzle piece to its puzzle with her ear just over his heart.

_Boys workin' on empty_ _  
_ _Is that the kind'a way to face the burning heat?_ _  
_ _I just think about my baby_ _  
_ _I'm so full of love I could barely eat_ _  
_ _There's nothing sweeter than my baby_ _  
_ _I'd never want once from the cherry tree_ _  
_ _'Cause my baby's sweet as can be_ _  
_ _She give me toothaches just from kissin' me_

With every year it gets easier and easier to feel like this isn’t some dream he’s going to be stripped of. That every night She is going to come home to him and hold him like he’s the most precious thing she’s ever seen and lean into him mumbling that he smells like home as she presses her body against his in their tiny living room. She tips her head up to him and presses onto her toes and he obliges with a soft ,slow kiss while his thumb traces back and forth along her jaw.

_When my time comes around_ _  
_ _Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_ _  
_ _No grave can hold my body down_ _  
_ _I'll crawl home to her_

This. This is where George belongs, here wrapped in her arms with the smell of coconut and vanilla blanketing him. Feeling her smile against his lips when he kisses her, the sound of her voice as she laughs at his jokes or hearing her hum quietly in their kitchen. 

_Boys when my baby found me_ _  
_ _I was three days on a drunken sin_

When Fred died the world went with him. George disappeared after the funeral without any warning. A parent should never live to see their child’s grave, older siblings should never have to bury their younger sibling, and one half of a whole should never have to endure a world they came into as a pair alone. The grief of his family was suffocating and it didn't take long before there was a blow-up at family dinner when someone dared to make a joke, as though Fred wasn't dead and things could ever be the same again. He fled the Burrow in a fit of rage, of despair that Fred could leave him here like this. The next several days a blur of drunken mistakes ending with a fight in the pub that had flesh connecting with flesh before George could even reach for his wand. Rough stones scraping his skin as he was tossed from the pub out into the street , a very frightened voice calling his name and a mass of dark curls before everything went black.

_I woke with her walls around me_ _  
_ _Nothin' in her room but an empty crib_ _  
_ _And I was burnin' up a fever_ _  
_ _I didn't care much how long I lived_ _  
_ _But I swear I thought I dreamed her_ _  
_ _She never asked me once about the wrong I did_

Waking up still drunk on an overstuffed couch in a small bare flat surrounded by piles of books and a small fire casting a sad glow on the room. On the table between them a bowl of soup and a mug of tea under stasis keeping them steaming, across from him Hermione with her legs draped over the side of a small armchair looking much smaller and thinner than he remembered. He took her in as she read quietly by the low light noting she shared the same dark bruises under her eyes that he was accustomed to seeing in the mirror and her face was splotchy as though she’d been crying recently. He shifted and she turned a small tired smile to him and gestured at the food. She wasn’t going to press about why he’d been where he’d been so he ate and he listened to the sound of turning pages in the aftermath before he fell asleep again. It was dark when he woke, Hermione still curled in the armchair looking as though she'd been fighting off sleep for a while. 

"Didn't want to leave you alone." Was all she offered but her face told George she didn't want to be alone either.

_When my time comes around_ _  
_ _Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_ _  
_ _No grave can hold my body down_ _  
_ _I'll crawl home to her_

Days of their new routine, neither really speaking but comfort in the knowledge that they were both mourning something in a way nobody else could understand. George found himself sleeping in Hermione’s room when her screams woke him or his woke her,it was easier to sleep next to someone solid and warm than on the couch. George finally writing his family to apologise to them after a week to let them know he was safe and being cared for. The return letter in his mothers shaky hand covered with tear spots telling him there was nothing to be sorry for and home would be waiting for him when he was ready.

_When my time comes around_ _  
_ _Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_ _  
_ _No grave can hold my body down_ _  
_ _I'll crawl home to her_

Months going by with Hermione expanding the apartment to include a new room for George despite his protests that he doesn’t need a room, a small workshop attached though he vehemently denied inventing ever again. In the beginning he would go out and drink until it didn’t hurt so much but he always seemed to end up back to Hermione. Eventually he began staying in to listen to Hermione read aloud to fill the space and it was almost as soothing as the fire whiskey had been.

Occasionally her hair would snap the tie seemingly out of nowhere making them both jump. George would laugh as Hermione huffed and summoned a new one complaining what a waste it was that she couldn’t seem to find reliable ones. It was a small gesture for George to create one for her that wouldn’t break but she found him in the workshop one morning doing just that, she stood still as a shadow in the doorway as he hunched in on himself and she left him there, turning to go make his favourite breakfast for the both of them. He needed space to grieve his first project alone, when he was ready he would come to her.

A little over and hour later as she sat at the table sipping her tea he dropped to the floor next to her, arms going around her waist and his head heavy on her lap. She held him as he sobbed and when he asked why it wasn’t him instead of Fred she didn’t answer. There was no answer she could give him that would heal the hurt or soothe the raw wound. Instead she stroked his hair and rubbed circles onto his back until the shaking in his shoulders slowed and his breathing evened out. It was easy for her to kiss the top of his head the way her mother once had for her when she was upset and he nodded slowly to himself before taking the seat next to her.

It helped she didn’t try to make it seem like everything would be all-right when he knew it wasn’t. The food was hot, his mothers recipe for waffles and home-made syrup ,and for the first time George felt hungry.

_My baby never fret none_ _  
_ _About what my hands and my body done_ _  
_ _If the lord don't forgive me_ _  
_ _I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me_ _  
_ _When I was kissing on my baby_ _  
_ _And she put her love down soft and sweet_ _  
_ _In the low lamplight I was free_ _  
_ _Heaven and hell were words to me_

She never asked where he went when he went out in the dark evening hours when sleep evaded them, knowing he would come home to her when his soul was as settled as it could be. And he did without fail, joining her in the living room as she read or waiting as she moved over and lifted the comforter and sheet so he could tuck in and wrap around her like she was his anchor to this world. His hair was wet from the rain and his skin cold with the smell of crisp autumn air the night he cracked his first genuine joke to Hermione while they were wrapped up in her comforter, her laugh pushed an unexpected rush of warmth through his chest and he thought he'd like to feel it again. 

His world would never be the same as it was but he found it had started turning again with Her by his side.

_When my time comes around_ _  
_ _Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_ _  
_ _No grave can hold my body down_ _  
_ _I'll crawl home to her_

He'd been at the graveyard for several hours but she was waiting by the fireplace wearing one of the sweaters he’d left laying around with a warm cup of cocoa in hand somehow knowing, as she always seemed to, when he would be coming in. The snow on his coat was rapidly melting in the warmth of their home as he shook it out of his hair and shielded his cup. When had it become their home instead of Hermione’s home to him? Her hands felt scorching where they brushed his and she made a joke about inviting a vampire into the household. It felt natural to laugh with her while she set his coat on the hook and they sat down for their evening ritual of talking or reading next to each other on the couch. When had Hermione stopped sitting on the armchair? Something came over him then and It was too natural to utter her name while she was reading, to reach out and cradle her face in his hands when she turned her head up to look at him with her big soft eyes. 

Then her lips silky and full giving beneath his and her gentle hands as they wrapped around his shoulders, it was chaste and sweet but it meant something had given.

Hand in hand on the path up to the Burrow for family dinner the next night, colour high in George’s face as he looks down at the girl next to him like he’s found the worlds most interesting puzzle and he can’t quite figure it out. Her returned look of adoration when he makes her laugh with a fullness most never hear from her. 

_When my time comes around_ _  
_ _Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_ _  
_ _No grave can hold my body down_ _  
_ _I'll crawl home to her_

When George pulls back to look at his wife of five years he sees his future laid out before him, it's not the future he had imagined but he will never let anyone take it from him. He's home. 


End file.
